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NASA cuts funding to private spaceship developer

By Maggie McKee

Rocketplane Kistler had received NASA funding to develop a reusable rocket called K-1 that would send supplies to the space station (Illustration: Rocketplane Kistler)

NASA has terminated an agreement with Rocketplane Kistler, one of two private companies that had won agency funding to develop supply ships for the International Space Station. Now, it plans to use the money it had set aside for RpK to fund competing proposals.

Currently, the only US spaceship that can send crew and cargo to the International Space Station is the shuttle, which is due to be retired in 2010. Its replacements, the Orion crew capsule and Ares rockets, are not expected to be ready to fly until 2015.

To bridge that gap, NASA has begun to cultivate the development of private spacecraft to supply the &dollar;100 orbital outpost in a programme known as COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services).

In August 2006, the agency agreed to provide &dollar;207 million to RpK, based in Oklahoma City, and &dollar;278 million to Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), based in El Segundo, California, from then until 2010 – providing they met certain milestones along the way.

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But in May 2007, Rocketplane Kistler – which was working on a reusable rocket called K-1 – failed to meet its fourth milestone, which required the company to raise &dollar;500 million in private financing. NASA warned the company in early September that its funding was in jeopardy, and on Thursday it formally terminated the agreement. To date, RpK has received about &dollar;32 million in NASA funding.

Limited money

“NASA has a limited amount of money to invest in,” said Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of the commercial crew and cargo programme at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, US, in a telephone briefing with reporters. “Let’s make certain every dollar . . . is put to best use.”

Lindenmoyer denied that the setback meant the COTS programme was back to ‘square one’. “Our other company, SpaceX, is proceeding well,” he said. SpaceX, which is developing a rocket called Falcon 9 that could potentially carry crew, has met all of its milestones so far and plans to fly its first COTS demonstration flight in late 2008, he added.

The &dollar;175 million that would have gone to RpK had it continued to meet its goals – which included a demonstration flight to the space station in 2009 – will now be used to fund one or more proposals in a new COTS competition, Lindenmoyer said. “We are now at the point where we’re able to consider reinvesting this money.”

NASA plans to release full details of the new COTS competition on Monday, and entrants will have 30 days to submit their proposals. One or more winners will be chosen by the first quarter of 2008, Lindenmoyer said.

Aerospace giants

Possible entrants include companies that currently have unfunded COTS agreements, in which they keep NASA abreast of their progress in spaceship development. One such company is Transformational Space Corporation (t/Space), based in Reston, Virginia, US, which had been one of six finalists for the original COTS seed money.

Perhaps surprisingly, some larger and more established aerospace companies may apply for the programme. “I’ve had some discussions with some of the traditional [aerospace firms] and they do express an interest,” said Lindenmoyer.

For its part, Rocketplane Kistler has said that NASA itself bears some responsibility for the company’s inability to raise enough private financing. According to Space News, in late September, RpK’s then-president Randy Brinkley sent the agency a letter arguing that a NASA agreement to pay Russia for space station supply trips through 2011 undercut the need for COTS services.

But Lindenmoyer says that in light of the shuttle’s retirement, NASA must consider various means of sending cargo and crew to the station, which is set to be re-supplied about once every month.

Two phases

“We recognised we may need to turn to our international partners especially in the near term,” he said. “It was important we had the ability to re-supply the International Space Station in the early years, or else certainly there would be no space station to re-supply in the later years.”

The original COTS programme was structured in two phases. The first asks companies to demonstrate any combination of four capabilities&colon; delivering or disposing of unpressurised cargo, delivering or disposing of pressurised cargo, delivering pressurised cargo and returning it to Earth, or transporting astronauts to and from the station.

The second phase involves a competition in which NASA would then award contracts for going to the station. Companies that had not received initial COTS funding would also be eligible to compete for those contracts.